Long-Term Team Projections

I put this together in a couple minutes earlier today. I'm sure some of the minute details are off. I'm sure some of you have some additional prospects that you feel should be in the picture. However, I think it's a nice snapshot of this team over the next four years.

Basically, for all of the worries about this team and for the low ranking of our farm system, I think we'll actually be pretty solid into 2015 with this likely being our worst season. I think we have some pretty solid depth emerging.

Looking at this, the keys to long-term success in my mind would be:

-Acquiring a long-term ace or signing Liriano long-term if he happens to emerge as that person

-Exchanging excessive wealth of OF talent in the next year or two for SP depth. I'm particularly happy we have Ryan in charge to do this verses Billy Smith. We're going to have to take some risks here, and I hope we realize it. 2013-2015 is going to create a massive cluster in the OF. We'll have Span, Revere, Benson, Hicks, Willingham, Morales, Plouffe and Arcia all at the MLB or knocking at the door. All 8 guys have varying degrees of upside and serious moves are going to need to be made here. It's a position of strength to hopefully help strengthen the corners and starting pitching, but Ryan is going to be forced to make some serious long-term bets here.

-Mauer needs to play at least at 75% of his contract level for the next four years because he's really preventing us from acquiring a true impact player at 1B/3B/DH as would be optimal. As a result, we're going to have to heavily lean on Valencia and Parmelee to be solid players over the next couple years. They have the talent, and I hope they get there. However, I'm not convinced.

-We're going to have to have Levi Michael live up to the hype or for Luke Hughes or Alexi Casilla to become solid MLB starters to pair with Dozier and shore up that long-term middle infield.

That is a terrific evaluation, and you're right, we do need to start looking to swap OF for SP help, but I'm not entirely sure Terry Ryan actually is the guy to do it. He is extremely conservative when it comes to trades. He was always more inclined to swap border line prospects for other teams usefull but not All-Star caliber players. Mark Reman for Todd Jones, Bobby Kielty for Shannon Stewart. Remember he stepped down when he was about to take all the heat for failing to trade Santana and Hunter mid-season. Hunter left for nothing and the Twins ended up finding very few trade partners for Santana since he only had one more year on his contract. Bill Smith was much more aggressive on the trade front, it just so happened he was terrible at it.
Side note: I love the 6 for Marquis in his value to the rotation! I was never in favor of signing Nick Blackburn's carbon copy.

Thanks for the responses, guys. This is a great board.
Reusse wrote a column today about the lack of impact players from recent Twins drafts. While his breakdown was fairly accurate, I have to say that the potential of the 2015 team potentially featuring Benson, Hicks, Arcia, Morales, Sano, and Rosario with Mauer hopefully still in his prime are very intriguing.
Those are six prospects with a lot of tools, lot of upside and every has really, really produced (outside of Hicks and Morales, to some degree).
Throw in big FA splashes at 1B/DH and a true ace, and that team could be perennially dominant. Yes, there are three full seasons of baseball to play in the meantime and a million different variables, but the outlook is significantly better than a lot of the doom-and-gloom I've seen/heard/read regarding the Twins.
As I said above in the breakdown, we could even have a strong season this season if Valencia and Parmelee hold their own, Mauer & Morneau are 75% of what they used to be, position players perform at reasonable expectations and if Frankie and Blackburn remain hot. Yea, that's a lot to go right, but we've seen this team perform way beyond these types of expectations before.
Who knows? Maybe I'm a homer, but I'm excited to get some of those young players together through the system in an effort to recreate a superior version of the early/mid-2000s teams. Hopefully, some of those steps begin this year with Valencia, Dozier, Parmelee, Hendricks, Benson, etc.

Reusse wrote a column today about the lack of impact players from recent Twins drafts. While his breakdown was fairly accurate,.
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Ok. Let me put this in another way:
anyone has as much credibility as far as baseball is concerned as Reusse; or even more. So your chart beats Reusse's. He doesn't have one. I doubt that he even knows who the Twins drafted recently.

Hate to redo the same shot but Mr Reusse and I crossed paths a couple days ago. A couple of Twins' minor league games going on. He was looking at the AAA game:

I think at that point he was having a twitter war with his phone. Really.
So, your opinion is better than his, even though his might be a tad louder (and more expensive to the people who pay to get it out there...)